CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER
Murray Prendergast had proposed. The summer sport had become dead
earnest. Julia wrote Forbes the full details, explaining that the young
man was awaiting her answer, and that she had asked two weeks in which
to come to a decision. Apparently Julia, like Miss Finch, felt that
to refuse Prendergast would be flying in the face of Providence, even
though accepting him seemed a harsh necessity.
"'It's not what you and I dreamed of in the dear old days,'" wrote
Julia. "'Oh, Burton, how far away those happy times seem when we sat
hand in hand and planned our future. How merciless life is, Burton! Is
there some dark fate in whose hands we are only puppets?'"
Agatha broke off in her reading to lift a scarlet face. "Must I go on
with this?"
"Do you mean that you're tired?" Forbes' voice was self-controlled but
in his pale cheeks a pulse beat like a trip hammer. Even his tears
would not have hurt her like that palpitating spot over which his will
was powerless.
"Yes, I _am_ tired. I'm terribly tired of the people who talk about
fate when it's all their own cowardice, and pity themselves for losing
what they deliberately threw away."
"It's a matter of view-point," said Forbes tonelessly. "If that's all,
I'm afraid I must ask you to go on. I--I could hardly have Howard
read it." All at once his white cheek showed a stain of red, as if
the mere thought that any eyes but his own should see that letter was
humiliating beyond endurance.
Julia's letter was as long as usual and decidedly more sentimental.
She surrendered herself with abandon to the luxury of heart-break.
She recalled a number of tender episodes, and wondered pathetically
why fate could not have spared lovers so fond. To Agatha, Julia's
melancholy was a theatrical make-believe on the face of it, as much
a pose as her pretense of affection. Agatha did her best to spoil
the effect of the letter by reading rapidly, and in a monotonous
sing-song, but she could not keep her eyes from the face of the man
before her, and she saw that every tender memory the missive evoked
found response in his tortured heart.
She wound up breathless and hot and trembling uncontrollably. Forbes
thanked her with a formal courtesy that added to her pain, for it
seemed to set her at a distance. She wanted to put her arms about him,
and cry over him, and tell him that the hurt would not last. Then she
remembered with bitterness that she was a withered old woman in whose
heart the fires of love had burned to ashes, long, long before, if
indeed they had ever been kindled.
"I'd like a sheet of paper, please," Forbes said with the same
laborious politeness. "I'll scrawl a line myself."
"What are you going to tell her?"
His air of surprise at the question indicated that there was but one
answer. "What is there to say, except to wish her all happiness?"
"You're not going to blame her, then?"
"God forbid." He took the sheet she gave him, wrote upon it rapidly
and folding it across, handed it back to her. "I'll have to ask you to
direct the envelope for me," he said, still heart-breakingly patient.
"I can write well enough for Julia's eyes, but not for Uncle Sam's."
Agatha did not reply. The breeze, always fresh upon the porch, had
parted the folded sheet, and her reluctant gaze caught the signature,
"Always yours, B.F." She turned away her eyes and caught her breath.
"Always yours." That was the cruelty of it. Julia would marry Murray
Prendergast and yet keep her hold on the heart of the man she had
abandoned in his need. Her selfishness could not alter his loyalty.
If the letter just read did not reveal her to him in her incomparable
egotism, nothing ever would.
Agatha's heart bled for him in his white resignation. If he had done
anything but sit there like a man under sentence of death, she would
have felt equal to the occasion. But this white suffering terrified
her. She dared not trust herself to look at him, for her eyes ran
over at the sight of his drawn face. She stared out over the serene
landscape as she said unsteadily, "Did you ask her to wait?"
"Wait? Why wait?"
"For you to get well, of course. If she's so fond of you, she ought to
be able to wait a year or two until you've recovered your sight."
He shrugged his shoulders without replying, but the gesture revealed
more than hopelessness, something alarmingly akin to indifference. And
though Agatha knew that in the nature of the case, this mood could not
last, it added fuel to her hatred of the shallow, selfish woman who
was responsible. In her serener moments Agatha comforted herself by
the reflection that however unhappy Forbes might be without Julia, he
was bound to be more unhappy with her. But in the present crisis that
consolation failed her. She was swayed by the desire to give him, at
all costs, the thing he wanted.
Her plan was formed in an instant. Agatha was aware that with many
women as with all men, undisputed possession tends to indifference.
Forbes' one chance with Julia, she implicitly believed, was to awaken
in the mind of that complacent young woman a doubt as to whether her
unfortunate lover was in reality hers always, as he declared himself.
Forbes, who scorned to ask even for a few months' delay, could not be
expected to lend himself to the scheme unfolding in Agatha's fancy.
Some friend must do for him what he would not stoop to do for himself.
As Agatha walked to the writing-desk, holding the folded sheet pinched
shut with thumb and finger, for fear of again reading the assurance of
Forbes' unalterable devotion, there was something oddly gallant in her
bearing. Her keen common sense was temporarily quiescent. Her heart had
things all its own way. Since the prospect of losing Julia irrevocably
had graven that terrible look upon Forbes' face, she must find some way
of making Julia hesitate to engage herself to Prendergast There was but
one chance, as far as Agatha could see. She resolved to take it.
No one could consider it singular, Agatha decided, as she seated
herself, if an amiable old lady should send a note of congratulation to
the girl to whom she had penned so many communications. Agatha almost
snatched the stationery from the drawer. She had a most unnatural
fear of losing her courage by delay. At the moment she lacked neither
courage nor inspiration.
"My Dear Miss Studley:
"I'm sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your
grandmother."
Agatha paused, bit her pen and frowned. "I am, of course," she told
herself, with that odd impression of dual identity, which at times
made it difficult for her to remember whether she was nineteen or
sixty-seven. "But it isn't worth while to make her feel so youthful."
She reached for a fresh sheet of paper and made a new start.
"My Dear Miss Studley:
"I am sure you will pardon a line from a woman old enough to be your
mother, who has come to feel right well acquainted with you through
Mr. Forbes, and through reading your letters aloud to him. I want
to be one of the first to congratulate you, and to wish you all the
happiness you deserve."
Her pen poised in air, Agatha combated the temptation to underline the
last two words. "It's exactly what I _do_ wish her," she mused. "All
the happiness she deserves, not a bit more nor a bit less. Poor wretch,
it's an inhuman sort of wish but I can't help it, and I'm afraid she
won't realize that I'm consigning her to Purgatory."
The pen resumed its hurried scratching. It was not necessary for Agatha
to wait for inspiration. Words came in a flood.
"Some people might blame you for your engagement, so soon after
breaking with Mr. Forbes, but I assure you I do not feel that way. I
am unmarried myself, and I know that when a woman loses one chance,
she may never get another. Mr. Forbes might die or change his mind. I
think you are very sensible to make sure of Mr. Prendergast while he
is in the mood. Whatever ill-natured people may say about you, I for
one will always take this view."
Agatha drew a long breath of pure satisfaction. She had undertaken the
letter with the sole thought of rushing to Forbes' assistance in his
extremity. But virtue was proving its own reward. She was enjoying
herself immensely. Her sense of satisfaction made her reckless. When
again the pen began moving down the sheet, it wrote more than Agatha
had originally intended.
"I suppose you sometimes feel a little anxious about Mr. Forbes
and his future. It is hard for us women to get rid of a feeling of
responsibility for the men who love us. And I am glad I can set your
natural misgivings at rest. It would not be a great surprise to me
if you should hear of another engagement in the near future. Yet Mr.
Forbes is a very honorable gentleman, I need not assure you, and as
long as you were unmarried, or at least not engaged, he would not have
permitted himself to become entangled with any other woman. But this
summer he has spent a great deal of time with a girl who lives in the
neighborhood. She is considered extremely pretty and though that does
not mean anything to him at present, it is evident that he finds
her company most enjoyable. Indeed I believe he is more interested
in her than he himself realizes, while the fact that she has devoted
practically her entire summer to him, seems to indicate that it would
not be difficult to bring her to think of him as something more than
a friend. And I've noticed that she seems quite responsive when he
pats her hand or holds it, as he has a way of doing. I suppose he
feels that an invalid has a right to some little privileges. On one
occasion he did so far forget himself as to take her in his arms,
but the circumstances were quite unusual, and I saw to it that the
indiscretion was never repeated. I always manage to be around when the
young people are together, for, as our beloved Longfellow expresses
it, 'Man is fire and woman is tow.'
"I'm afraid I am a poor one to talk about discretion when I am writing
you all this. I'm sure if Mr. Forbes knew he would be very much put
out with me, and so I am going to ask you not to speak of this if you
should happen to write again. Very likely Mr. Prendergast will not
approve of your corresponding with an old flame, and who can blame
him, for as Will Carlton says so ably, 'She that is false to one can
be the same with two,' or words to that effect. I'm afraid my memory
is not what it once was.
"Excuse this garrulous letter. How I have run on about Mr. Forbes
instead of merely carrying out my first intention, and wishing you the
future you so richly deserve.
"Very truly yours,
"Agatha Kent."
Agatha re-read the closely written sheets with growing delectation. In
every respect they measured up to her anticipations. She had expressed
her sentiments toward Julia with a plainness she would hardly have
believed possible in a letter superficially observing the amenities
of civilized life. She had planted some barbed suggestions where she
flattered herself they would render the reader most uncomfortable.
But that was not all. It is a thoroughly human weakness to wish to
eat one's cake and have it too, and Agatha suspected Julia of having
more than her share of this familiar characteristic. Julia, so Agatha
argued, saw herself the irreproachable wife of a wealthy man, enjoying
all the dignities incident to the Prendergast social sphere, and at the
same time the object of another man's hopeless adoration. The doubt
Agatha's letter suggested, that she could continue without a rival
to rule in Forbes' affections, was, in Agatha's opinion, Forbes' one
chance to keep her from the decisive step.
Agatha enclosed Forbes' brief communication with her own lengthy one
and despatched it by Howard before qualms could assail her as to the
advisability of dropping this particular bomb into the enemy's camp.
She knew vaguely that a host of suggestions stood marshaled at the back
of her brain, ready to demonstrate conclusively her lack of wisdom. If
Julia did not choose to consider the letter confidential, trouble would
ensue. The fact that Agatha saw all Forbes' letters, and that he knew
only what she chose to tell him, gave her but slight advantage, since
she confessed to scruples in the matter of other people's letters. And
if it had the result she believed possible, and Julia refused to engage
herself to Prendergast till Forbes' recovery was certain or proved
impossible, Agatha could not congratulate herself on having assured her
friend's happiness.
"I'm afraid I'm a good deal like a mother who gives the baby the
scissors to play with because he cries for them. Only with a baby you
can distract its attention, and make it think that something else is
just as good, and with Burton Forbes that wouldn't work."
And then having satisfied herself by peering through the window that
Forbes' face still wore the dazed look of a creature incomprehensibly
wounded, Agatha threw herself upon the couch and sought the relief of
tears. She wept as she did everything else. Hot tears rained down upon
the pillow. Sobs shook her. Every now and then mirth got the upper
hand and she laughed hysterically, interrupting, though briefly, the
Niobe-like activities.
The storm was over as suddenly as it had begun. Agatha rose and
regarded her swollen features in the mirror with much disfavor.
"I suppose it's no use to put powder on my nose. It would only look
like a strawberry sprinkled with sugar. And anyway, Mr. Forbes can't
see what a fright I am."
As if that thought had a miraculously sustaining power, Agatha drew a
long breath and passed into the kitchen to help Phemie with the dinner.